Blow Out All The Candles
by alt-c
Summary: "When Draco got sick...no...let me start from the beginning, maybe you'll understand it then, or not, I don't know. I was twenty five when I saw Draco Malfoy again. I was sat at a bar, Ginny had gone to the bathroom and I saw him sitting on his own sipping a cocktail and staring at the lights in front of him."
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer** -I do not own or claim to own the characters in this fanfiction or the world of Harry Potter. This is written for pure non profitable entertainment purposes.

"Harry. Harry I need a doctor."

"Draco-"

"Now Harry!"

-x

When Draco got sick...no...let me start from the beginning, maybe you'll understand it then, or not, I don't know.

I was twenty five when I saw Draco Malfoy again. I was sat at a bar, Ginny had gone to the bathroom and I saw him sitting on his own, sipping a cocktail and staring at the lights in front of him.

The first thing I noticed was the glasses. Thick rim's, black, cute. Of course I never told him I thought he looked cute that day, he'd probably kill me; then again he say's those thing's, but I know he likes them. The second thing I noticed was his hair, it was slightly longer and wavy. It suited him.

I didn't think much. I didn't know what to think. I mean I hadn't seen him in years and we never really got along, as I'm sure you know. That was until he turned and looked straight at me. His silver eye's sparkling and a subtle twitch of the left corner of his mouth and suddenly everything was being seen through the head of a needle. I don't know how to explain it. It was like everything had been put in to tiny pin point perspective and the only thing in focus, clear and at the fore front was Draco Malfoy, Sitting alone at a bar I was in with my long term fiance, in a grey-blue cashmere sweater and jeans and his polished black shoe's.

Ginny say's he blew out all the candles. I'll explain it later, but it made sense. It'll make sense. Or not.

I don't want to go in to how we met again or bumped in to each other a second or third time, often quite literally, because it would be tedious and boring and honestly the amount's of time we ended up going for coffee and just talking, avoiding conversation about the war and what we were now doing with our lives other than the obvious, Me becoming an Auror and being with Ginny, him being a free lance writer and running the Malfoy's many business' and endeavors, was immense.

So I'll skip to the first time we had sex. Ginny sat me down and talked to me about where I wanted our relationship to go and you know, I can never fully show her how much what she did meant to me. How despite how much she loved me, she acknowledge how my feelings for her were changing or maybe had already changed or been platonic and our relationship somewhat convenient and shoved me out the door with my coat and told me to go after Draco or she'd shovel my eye's out with a spoon for being so clueless. Even though she had tears in her eye's and didn't take the engagement ring off for two months after and now wore it around a gold chain. For keep sake she say's. She's telling the truth.

Draco and I didn't have sex that day. Far from it in fact. I had gone to Draco, told him how I felt and he'd punched me in the face and told me he never wanted to see me again. Romantic huh?

I knew it was a test. He'd set way to many for me while we were kid's, including the first time we met, when he was still that bigoted aristocratic brat, clinging to his father's coat tails. Of course I didn't leave him alone.

I called, I text, I threw rocks at (and broke) the window of his flat and not even that seemed to make him reconsider.

It wasn't until he finally opened the door after a month and told me to '_piss the fuck off Potter_' did I notice something was really wrong. I didn't understand what it was, but I just knew y'know? He had bag's under his eye's, his cheeks were red but in a feverish way and not like how they had blushed every time I tucked a strand of his white-blond hair, like silk, behind his ear. He looked tired and upset and so _broken._

He had cancer.

The doctor's said it was stress induced, many had said it was irreversible, some had said it could be fixed, both Muggle and Wizarding. I remember how fragile he felt in my arms when I kissed him, how subtle his movement's were beneath me and breathy and soft, like innocent sighs were his moans. He was still so graceful, he clung on to me and I held just as tightly back. He threw me in the water that day, not thinking about the splash I'd create. He now had me in his hands and..._god_, I can't even _describe_.

He pushed me out to sea in a little boat he'd made out of our heartstrings and mossy memories without a life raft and I wouldn't be able to pull myself back. That's how it felt. In that moment I was his.

_Click._

Just like that.

The inaudible click of everything fitting together and the simple handing over of my heart to him and visa versa.

_I thought you said you didn't feel pain?_ I had asked him, Joking on our visit to the hospital while he winced at the massive needle they'd just stabbed in to his frail porcelain arm. I wanted to snap it and rip it out of him for even scratching him just a bit.

He'd gone very quiet then.

_I feel pain it's not physical anymore._

_I..._

He never did finish what he was going to say, even without the interruption of a doctor coming in to check on him as I pretended not to stare at his blood flitting through the tube and in to a small bag like it was nothing. He'd smiled at me meekly and squeezed my hand at the same time as I squeezed his.

He didn't want me to love him. I know that. That's why he tried to push me away so much.

We got in to fights. So many pointless, petty fights that I wouldn't take back for the world. Just because I still refused to leave him.

He pushed me. He pushed me all the way over the edge and dangled me by a thread of every whispered promise and secret under the covers at night and early morning or evening when all we could do was stay in bed and enjoy holding the other and the feeling of the texture of his smooth skin against mine and my calloused hands interlinked with his perfectly.

_Find me._

He'd said it only once, but it had stayed with me for good. It was random and we were running together in the forest on our annual visit to Hogwarts under star speckled sky and he'd smiled and said it to me before bolting through the tree's.

I don't know why it meant so much to me at first, but I know now. Maybe it's part of the hero complex he always complains about. I had the feeling that I did want to find him despite having him. I wanted to find the Draco I knew as a child. The misguided, hurt little boy I regret not making the effort to fix. He doesn't need fixing exactly...he's perfect but...

He's my lodestar in a darkness I can't avoid.

He's grace incarnate and strength made more beautiful that God's promises to Adam.

But when he straddles my hip's in the morning with those silver eye's in drowning morning haze and a slight smile only I can see, I know he is so much more to me than that.

Ah...Ginny said he blew out all the candles. What she meant by that was he reset a lot of things for me, with a gentle flicker he blew out my worry's, my past, my future and plunged me straight in to darkness.

When he's unraveled like a spool of thread and came undone like an exploding star I just wanted to preserve him. Every memory every feeling, notion, sensation. Everything.

If some one asked me to tell the world I love Draco Lucius Malfoy I'd whisper it right in to Draco's ear himself. He is my world.

Draco wants kid's. He had always wanted kid's. We had talked about it, but what with the surgery's to lengthen his life expectancy and his diabetes getting in the way, with all the times he'd go in to un-induced hypo's, it was something he gave up on his own. I would have given him anything. Heck I would have got myself some ovaries and a womb and told him to make us a baby if he'd let me, but I didn't want to upset him anymore. He said he needed to make that decision.

_Just...just let me be in control...of this...okay?_

Draco's kisses are the best, Ginny always giggles when I tell her this, but they really are and I just...not the heated one's we have in the shower or in the bedroom, but the one's he gives me when I find him on the sofa reading, with his hair pulled back and his bright smile, it's those innocent _I love you more than anything_ kisses. I hope I show him just as much of that as he does me.

I love the sound of his heart beat. It's completely different, it's too it's own unique beat that I'm sure isn't like anyone else's. It's special, it sounds so different like it's slightly off beat but perfect and just...Draco. My dragon hearted prince.

Cheesy I know. But why should I care?

We never avoided the issue of him being sick exactly. We just didn't base our lives on it. We didn't let it rule us. So we liked to think anyway.

It was when he was going through a particularly bad spell (no pun intended) that I started becoming over protective and he started hating it.

_You're __**suffocating**__ me, Harry can't you see! I'm already dieing but you're killing me!_

He'd said it.

I'm already dieing.

He'd said the one thing we never said. Screamed it in fact. With tear's streaming down his beautiful face and so much pain physically and emotionally and spiritually inside his slight frame and I just...

_Click._

There it was again.

Draco and I...me...I needed to protect him I just wanted...I just want...all I ask is to be able to _fix_ him. In all way's not just this.

The war, everything, it just fucked us all up, but...this was Draco. My Draco. He looked so _defeated_. That wasn't like him. It wasn't what it was supposed to be it was just...so hard for me to see that. That side of him I knew was there, but he hid and I ignored so it wouldn't upset him.

I took his hand, I kissed his knuckles and I went and ran him a bath, and used all my lemon and tea tree shower gel to make bubbles and I helped him undress in silence and helped him in.

I didn't get in with him. I sat on the side and let him rest his head against my arm up on the rim of the bath tub.

_Drown with me._

He whispered and I ran my hand through his hair, wetting it slightly and kissed his forehead.

_Always._

Every trip to the doctor's then was like some kind of count down. Like every time we stepped through those god forsaken, _fucking_ doors we were losing a life like we were in some kind of game.

I went to church a few times. Sometimes with Draco, sometimes on my own. I don't know what I...we were looking for.

We started traveling by train a lot. We went all over in our own private carriage, just the two of us watching the scenery blur past us. Draco's head in my lap, his eye's gazing out the window, mine on him.

_Leave me in the rain._

We had gone on a trip to Russia for two day's and it had rained, huge storm clouds above Moscow and he'd asked me that. He'd asked me to do the one thing I hated doing. Leaving him. I knew he wouldn't run...well I didn't know. I was petrified that he'd do something drastic, but I suppose I trusted him...or I was testing myself to see what it was like not having him there.

It was horrible. I hated every five minutes of it.

That's all it was.

Five minutes on his own. In the rain.

It felt like five years to me.

When he got back I wrapped him up in my arm's and just...didn't let go. He had to pry me off him.

He's restless at night, he has horrible dreams sometimes. As do I. We all do. But it's _Draco_.

I...I love him so much...that is such an over used meaningless word now. It's so much more than love it's just. _Everything_. He's my everything and there's no word for what I feel for him.

_"Harry. Harry I need a doctor."_

_"Draco-"_

_"Now, Harry!"_

I don't think I've ever felt so still in my entire life. Just sitting in the hospital waiting room, staring at the clock as each hour passed and each polystyrene cup of stale coffee got cold and rancid.

_Draco._

_Oh god, __**Draco**__._

I'd do anything he ever told me to. Anything.

It was so cold in the waiting room. I only noticed when I couldn't move my fingers off the cup without blowing on them.

We learn from the ones we hate the most.

That used to be Voldemort and I learned a lot about loyalty and sacrifice from him.

I hate the illness. I don't know what I've learnt from it, if anything at all.

_Blow out all the candles._

I didn't say it, but it was going over and over in my head, just willing Draco to do what he always did and not...do this to me. That's so selfish, but...love is isn't it? Love is just as bad an illness. It takes away from us and shatters and brakes us and holds us until death.

_I love you Harry._

Don't say that. _Please_, if anything why did you have to say that Draco? So final so...end all.

We're the reckless, we're the wild youth from the war and one thing I learnt from that is if you're still bleeding you're the lucky one.

Keep bleeding huh? You'd laugh at me I know you would, tell me how weird I sound saying that, but you'd get it.

Draco...you set fire to me. Are we lover's that went right?

Draco please don't _die_.

"Mr Potter?"

I stood.

"Mr Potter-Malfoy. He..."

_Click._

"He's suffered severe internal bleeding but we managed to stop the most of it. He's sufferd quite a lote and it took some hard work but we managed to stip the cause of the bleeding and the scan shows no sign of any further or future damage. I'm glad to to tell you he'll be okay for now and the cancer...we aren't sure how. It's a medical miracle, but it seems to have regressed significantly. Mr Potter-Malfoy sir...he's honestly a medical phenomenon, to even start to explain the complex- Mr Potter...you're going to be a father."

_Click._


	2. Chapter 2

"Ah Ba!"

"Yes! Good boy!"

Orion twisted his tiny fist in his mouth and yanked Draco's hair, his little forehead furrowed in concentration.

"Ah ba ba!"

"That's right, aren't you clever!"

Draco bounced his son lightly on his knee and gently pried the little hand out of his hair, instead placing it on his shoulder.

Draco couldn't believe it had been 10 months already since his little fire cracker was brought in to the world. It felt like just yesterday he was sat in the hospital, plugged to all kinds of machines at tubes leading to and in and out of uncomfortable places, Harry at his side looking like he didn't know the meaning of the word sleep.

-x

"We're having a baby."

"We're having a baby."

"Draco...we're having a baby!" Harry's eye's filled with tears and so did mine. I grabbed his gorgeous face and snogged him right there in front of all the nurses. We were having a baby! I was having a baby. Harry's baby!

-x

"How do you feel?" Harry asked adjusting the pillow behind my back.

"I'm one month pregnant Harry, you don't need to buy a stair lift just yet." I rolled my eye's and batted his hand away, adjusting the pillow myself.

"We need a stair lift!?"

"No Harry we don't need a stair lift."

I had woken up that night to find Harry hunched over the kitchen island, phone in hand getting a reference for stair lift installation.

-x

"You're so beautiful." Harry breathed against my neck. He cradled the small bump, the slight curve of my stomach, as I looked at the both of us in the mirror. I smiled and laced our finger's together.

Not to sound full of it, but I was. We were. I'd been getting better in general and the pregnancy had brought out a soft pink hue in my cheeks and a general healthy glow to my skin. My hair wasn't limp anymore, but instead fell at a considerable length just by my shoulders that I scrapped back in to place with the butterfly scrunchy Aimee, Harry's god-daughter had left behind.

The look in Harry's eye's was the same one he had when he said he loved me all those years ago.

Pregnancy wasn't so bad.

-x

"Holy shit! oh god!" I gagged. The smell of vomit making me even more sick than I felt. Harry sat beside me with a wet wash cloth and rubbed soothing circles on my back with his warm hands.

I shivered and wretched again.

"For fuck sakes! Oh g-"

Why the fuck do they call it Morning sickness if it happens all the _damn time_. If this wasn't payment enough for my sins then I don't know what was.

-x

"So what colour should we go for? The Taupe or the Lemon Meringue?" I asked Harry who looked just as perplexed.

"Erm...both?" He shrugged and maneuvered the full IKEA trolley in to a decent position so it wasn't blocking the aisle. He apologized to the couple behind us who smiled and nodded.

"I told you we should just get Mummy to get her decorator to do the room for us."

"I don't want our child to grow up spoilt."

"There's no harm in a little luxury Harry." I sniffed and flicked through the colour chart. It was a choice between 'Duck Egg' and 'Chocolate and Cream.'

"Well we don't know if we're having a boy or a girl yet so maybe we should wait till after their born to do any serious decorating for the room and just focus on the nursery. I think that's nau- Draco?"

Harry let go of the trolly and held my face in his hands. His face a picture of concern.

"Draco what's-"

"Harry." I took a deep breath. " Get me out of here. _Now._"

"Has your water broken!? But you're only five and half-"

"Harry!" I snapped. He looked puzzled when I blushed a deep shade of the 'Crimson Crush' I'd just been look at.

"Have...have you?"

I nodded.

"If you laugh Harry I swear I'll-"

He laughed.

That was the fourth time I'd wet myself that week.

"You have a baby laying on your bladder then laugh you asshole!"

-x

We ended up painting the bedroom a beautiful shade of cream. Harry and I spent hours painting wands and wizard hat's and our house crests all over the walls, along with an unnatural amount of Peppa Pig wall stickers.

"I don't know what makes you think he'll like Peppa Pig that much."

"We're having a boy!?" Harry yelled and picked me right up and swung me around.

"Yes! A boy! Okay, okay! _PREGNANT_! PUT ME DOWN!"

-x

"HARRY!" I tapped my foot against the kitchen tiles impatiently.

He rushed in, in his pajama bottoms.

"What's wrong!? Has your water broke!? Are you hurt!?" He took a step back when he saw the look on my face. Or maybe it was the ice tray in my hands that didn't really seem like the must have item for when your water breaks.

"How many times," I seethed quietly, "have I told you," I took a deep breath and glared up at him, "to fucking FILL THE FUCKING ICE TRAY!"

"Dra-"

"Shut up! It's YOUR job to fill the ice tray! I told you this morning to fill it! And what did you do?" I paused, tapping my foot even harder.

"It's three in the morni-!"

"WELL!?"

He visibly flinched. I suppose I should have felt guilty but it _was _his job to fill the ice tray.

"I didn't fill it?"

"NO! You didn't fill it! If I want a cold drink with ice cubes in it, then I need the fucking ice tray to be full and FROZEN! IN TO ICE CUBES!"

"But-"

"But, but, but what!? I ask you to do one simple thing and you can't even do that! And you want to know what makes it worse?"

"No?"

"THAT WAS A RHETORICAL QUESTION! WHAT MAKES IT WORSE IS THAT THERE IS ONE ICE CUBE IN HERE! ONE! To add salt to the wounds you leave ONE!" I wrestled with the tray and fished the ice cube out, "well you know what Harry? HAVE YOUR FUCKING MEASLY ONE ICE CUBE!" I threw it and it hit him in the head.

I flounced out muttering to myself and rubbing my swollen stomach.

-x

"Draco what's wrong?" He pulled me tighter and wiped the tears off my cheeks.

"Baby, what's the matter? Are you worried? What's wrong?"

"We're all out of Chocolate Digestives!"

-x

"I'm not going to have sex with you."

"But Haaaarrryyy!"

"You're eight months pregnant Draco. No."

"But that time in the shower! What about-"

"That was different."

"Is it because I wasn't as _fat t_hen!?"

"No, Draco. It's because you weren't heavily pregnant."

"But Harry!"

"Stop."

-x

"We are _not_ naming my son _Miguel_." Harry balked, his face twisted in disgust.

"What do you suggest then? John? Joe? Average Joe?" I countered slamming the baby name book shut.

"Well...no I mean..." He looked sheepish and rubbed his thumb along my hand where they rested on the table clasped together. "I kind of liked the fifth one you said."

"Rusty Kuntz? That was a joke you do-"

"No! The other one." He pursed his lips trying to think.

"Anass Rhammar? Willie Stroker? Gaye Males?"

"You're not funny."

"Orion?"

"Yeah...Orion."

-x

Harry squeezed my hand lightly while the doctor talked us through the procedure.

"We'll start with a few injections, the required anesthetics, the epidural so the lower half of your body will be numb, but you'll remain awake. You'll be prepped by having your abdomen washed with an antiseptic solution. The operating room staff will insert a catheter into your bladder and place sterile drapes over your tummy."

I looked over at Harry who was nodding in earnest, not noticing the grip on my hand was getting tighter.

"They'll also place a short screen on your abdomen so the field remains sterile and so you don't have to watch yourself getting cut! Even if you don't want to see the cut, you may want to catch a glimpse of your baby as he or she emerges, so ask your practitioner to lift your baby up for a quick peek when he or she is delivered. Your husband will be outfitted in sterile garb and allowed to sit near your head and hold your hand. If you're having an emergency C-section, there might not be time to numb you, in which case-"

Harry visibly paled and I couldn't stop myself, he looked so helpless and both the doctor and Harry jumped when I burst out laughing. Okay so bursting in to a hysterical fit of giggles may not have been the best thing to settle Harry's nerves, but with the way he looked you would have thought the doctor was talking about basting and baking our new born with a side of caramelised carrots.

I know Harry was the most nervous out of the both of us. The way he never let me sit down without a cushion or a blanket under or around me or the extra cream he put in my tea and the special back rubs to 'ensure no further damage to your spinal chord like the doctor said.'

It was sweet really. Of course it was. Nine months before we both thought I'd be six feet under. I know every time the doctor talks about how he's unsure of the chance of survival in rare cases kills Harry a little more inside. I'll survive. I know I will, I knew the minute the doctor told me that I was pregnant, I just had to survive. There was no two ways about it, it became about the baby. Every time I willed my body to just fucking get better it was for the tiny little bundle of cells inside me. So that it could grow and be born and have two very much alive parent's to care for it.

I was ecstatic when I found out. Scared the nurses and Harry half to death by squealing like a Mandrake. I was going to have a _baby_. I'd always wanted one and to make things better it was _Harry's_baby. My gorgeous, caring, beautiful husband's baby.

Okay so pregnancy wasn't exactly all sunshine and rainbows and having medical staff in and out of our Apartment every few day's was trying on both our nerves, but it was all worth it. The back pains were probably the worst. No. The morning sickness. Oh god definitely the morning sickness. Not to mention the peeing! Oh the amount of times I wet myself! I'm not selling this malarkey well, but when you first hold that little creation, your own child in you arms then all the times they decided to sleep on your bladder when you have things to do, will be worth it.

I wouldn't trade it for the world. All those times I looked in the mirror and the mound under my jumper turned in to a full round bump with Harry standing behind me, holding us both like we were the most precious things on earth was all worth it.

-x

"Harry tell me he'll be okay. _Please_."

Harry hesitated. He held me tightly as we stared at our son. Our tiny little baby boy inside an incubator. So small in comparison to the giant machines around him, helping him breath. Helping him stay alive.

"He'll be fine." Harry said, barely a whisper.

-x

"Draco?" Harry called from the hallway. He came in carrying three full shopping bags of all kinds of baby foods and yoghurt.

"AH!" Orion screeched and extended his arms out to his Daddy, clenching and unclenching his fists to be carried.

"Hello, Gorgeous!" Harry grinned scooping Orion up in to his arms and rocking him.

Draco stood and crossed his arms. Watching the two most perfect and precious things in his life laugh and cuddle each other.

Orion Sirius Potter-Malfoy was a beautiful baby and no one could deny it. He had inherited Harry's thick hair that had grown in to a glossy mop of flattering curls. His eye's were a stunning hazel with flecks of silver, just like Draco's, swirling in and around his iris'. His little button nose and chubby cheeks were Draco's favorite, he could sit for hours and kiss and nuzzle them.

Draco had never seen Harry so happy. It had been years, but save for a few lines Harry still looked as good as he used to. So did Draco, he prided himself in knowing that he'd beaten cancer and had a baby and still managed to pass as a 20-something, body and all. He always had a smile on his face, subtle or otherwise and he stared on lovingly at his son and his husband.

Harry shifted Orion from where he was blowing raspberry's on his belly, on to his hip. "Hello, love." Harry grinned and pulled Draco in by the waist, planting a kiss on to his supple lips, slipping his tongue in to Draco's mouth. "Mmm," Draco moved slightly to look at Harry. "As much as I'd like to continue snogging you Potter, our son's watching and we need to keep it PG." They both turned to see Orion regarding them with a deep set frown; babbling incoherently under his breath.

Draco moved away and Harry kissed Orion on the mouth, who laughed and pressed his mouth over Harry's eyelid.

"Close enough." Harry laughed, "Pasta or Bangers and Mash?

Draco smiled and kissed Harry again and then Orion.

"I think we'll get take-out tonight." Draco ran his fingers through Harry's hair, combing it in to a less unruly state.

Harry leaned in to the petting and nuzzled his nose against Orion's, who smooshed his cheeks together and yelled.

"What's the special occasion?" Harry said as best he could with his face being pulled and pushed in to many different angles.

"Nothing," Draco tilted his head to the side and interlinked his fingers with Harry's, back by his waist. "I just feel today's a take out day."


End file.
